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In a politically correct world, there is no room today for criticising anyone if they are scrawny or fat, dark, wheatish or fair, short or tall, dressed to kill, or, killing with their dress sense! Yeah! It is all very good to not calling anyone names or even endearments of yore like Kaalu, Moti, Bhains (cringe), Paetlu, Dhepsi (overweight), Lambu, Gattu, and the more relevant in this context Chammakchchallo or someone inappropriately or gaudily dressed, not necessarily a bimbo or a petit-maitre...

How many times have you been body-shamed? While people are today increasingly aware of the inherent meanness associated with the shaming of an individual for weight, what cannot be negated is the need to eat healthy and burn those extra calories. Whether you are at it or not, here are a few points to help you visually tone down that paunch. And this is specifically for men. Women can borrow some tips too! Go monochrome! Not necessarily black or white, but any colour in some of its various hues...

A movement has recently been launched in the European Union urging youngsters and influencers to serve as role models to help "make fast fashion out of fashion." Can we in the Northeast take the lead in India and emerge as flagbearers of a movement that is urgently needed to make this planet a better place to thrive on. We have all been avidly following the terrible earthquake in Turkiye that saw lives in multi-storied towers collapse like nine pins. Don’t you think that natural calamities...

Yellow. Mustard. White. These are the colours that fashion must revel in, as the weather turns a corner, marking the advent of spring. And Basant Panchami or Saraswati Puja is the true harbinger. In Assam and some other eastern states, Saraswati Puja is a special occasion for many, many young women as it is the day that celebrates their coming of age to drape their mother’s six yards. No mean task that, more so holding it all together and yet walk and run with elegance. So if you are the tomboy...

Ask questions before going in for faux or so-called 'vegan' leather, for most are essentially altogether polyurethane or contain significant amounts of petroleum components. Circa the late Eighties. I had just discovered khadi kurtas, roughly woven in shades of blue, black, an ombre, and a tangerine too. The bags were either of cloth and now I know some PU or polyurethane leather, which means it was artificial and so peeled off after some time. Little did we know then how harmful these were for...

COP27 has just come to an end in the seaside resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in the land of the pyramids. Reports coming in informed that more than 40,000 topnotchers from across the globe were trying to hammer out a route map on how to reach net-zero by 2050. The spotlight there was on fashion too, being as it is the second most polluting industry globally. Now what is net-zero? Fast fashion with its use of fibre to fabrics derived from fossil fuels — the non-renewable sources of energy like...

There was a time when men used to go to the local barber and be done with their fashion pronouncement for the week, if not a couple of months, apart from the daily shave, weekly trimming of nails, some type of cream and an aftershave. And not to forget the bushy ears (vellus) and nostrils (cilia)! I remember the Afghan Snow that my father used, and the ivory’ish buoy-shaped Old Spice after-shave bottle with a screw-on top. The Afghan Snow, I learn as I google, is India’s first beauty cream, and...

What’s in a colour? Everything! As a kid I was conditioned to believe that black is a strict no-no since I have our typical wheat-brown skin colour. Till one day well into my college days I chanced on a black khadi kurta and the mirror told me a different story. Today when I enter a shop, I may tell them not to show me any charcoal hues, but I invariably walk out with yet another sooty garb to be added to my closet. This seasoning of the mind is what fashion does not accept. What it does impact...

Did you ace the ruffle sari? Will you wear the nose ring a la the American socialite and businesswoman Kim Kardashian, looped with a double chain to huge hoops? Does the cold shoulder top still warm the cockles of your heart? Irrespective of your body type, height, overall personality — if your answer is an affirmative yes, then you sure are a trend junkie. And if you frowned a tad or just felt your eyebrows notch a high scale and perhaps a dash of disdain as you read this, you are either a...

You may or may not have come across these lines by the fashion diva Coco Chanel, the woman who gave the world the LBB or the little black dress, and more — “It’s not the appearance, it’s the essence. It’s not the money, it’s the education. It’s not the clothes, it’s the class”. Class, yeah! Class is in how you style yourself. Class is in how you play up your strengths. No fat-shaming, colour blaming, age-shaming, or whatever else that’s done to make people lose their sense of self-worth. Style...